Month: January 2021

Enlarge / Dalian Railway Station. (credit: akiradhin / Wikipedia)

In 2017, Adobe announced it would deactivate Flash at the end of 2020. Earlier this month, on January 12, Adobe carried through on its plans, deactivating Flash installations around the world. One result, according to Apple Daily, was chaos in a Chinese railroad in Liaoning province.

Officials at China Railway Shenyang use Flash-based software to plan each day's railroad operations. As a result of the outage, Apple Daily says, "staffers were reportedly unable to view train operation diagrams, formulate train sequencing schedules, and arrange shunting plans."

As a result, the railroad was unable to dispatch its trains, "leading to a complete shutdown of its railroads in Dalian, Liaoning province," according to Apple Daily.

Enlarge / A DirecTV satellite dish seen outside a bar in Portland, Oregon, in October 2019. (credit: Getty Images | hapabapa)

AT&T is reportedly closing in on a deal to sell a stake in DirecTV to TPG, a private-equity firm.

Unfortunately for customers hoping that AT&T will relinquish control of DirecTV, a Reuters report on Friday said the pending deal would give TPG a "minority stake" in AT&T's satellite-TV subsidiary. On the other hand, a private-equity firm looking to wring value out of a declining business wouldn't necessarily be better for DirecTV customers than AT&T is.

It's also possible that AT&T could cede operational control of DirecTV even if it remains the majority owner. CNBC in November reported on one proposed deal in which "AT&T would retain majority economic ownership of the [DirecTV and U-verse TV] businesses, and would maintain ownership of U-verse infrastructure, including plants and fiber," while the buyer of a DirecTV stake "would control the pay-TV distribution operations and consolidate the business on its books."

Enlarge / Bloodhound LSR made it to South Africa in 2019 to begin high-speed testing, but only with its single jet engine. (credit: Charlie Sperring/Bloodhound LSR)

Bad news, land-speed record fans: the project to set a new 1,000mph (1,609km/h) speed record is yet again in serious doubt. On Monday morning, the Bloodhound Land Speed Record Project revealed that it's looking for a new owner in order to try and break the existing record. Whoever steps in will need pretty deep pockets, too—almost $11 million (£8 million), in fact.

Trying to set a new land-speed record is probably one of the harder activities one can engage in. You need to design and build a vehicle capable of going faster than 763mph (1,228km/h), twice within an hour. You need to find somewhere flat enough to run the car, presumably away from neighbors who might get annoyed by the window-shattering sonic booms. And while all that sounds like a serious challenge, perhaps the biggest problem is finding the money to make it all happen.

Bloodhound LSR—formerly Bloodhound SSC—certainly has the pedigree to break the record. It was the brainchild of Richard Noble, who also masterminded the last two successful land-speed-record attempts. (Noble was even behind the wheel for the 1982 record.) Chief aerodynamicist Ron Ayers is another veteran, having designed Thrust SSC before Bloodhound. And the project identified and prepared an 8.5-square mile (22km²) stretch of South Africa's Hakskeen Pan to conduct the attempt.

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  Preeeeeeesenting... [credit: Square Enix ]

In Final Fantasy VII, spiky-haired protagonist Cloud Strife fights countless battles. But when he arrives in the red-light district called Wall Market, he faces what might be his greatest challenge: cross-dressing. To rescue his childhood friend and ally Tifa Lockhart from a seedy old slumlord, Cloud infiltrates an adults-only establishment called the Honey Bee Inn. The catch: to get to her, he must go undercover as a woman.

In the original 1997 version of FFVII, Cloud's drag transformation is played for laughs. Undertones of queer panic and derision punctuate nearly every character interaction while he's dressed in a frilly, lavender frock. The audience is supposed to guffaw at this warrior clad in women's clothing, tamping down any inherent issues of sexual identity and expression that could be attached to the scene. Final Fantasy VII, while heartfelt, dramatic, and in many ways beautiful, was never what could be interpreted as "in tune" with its sexual side.

Nearly 25 years later, Final Fantasy VII Remake flipped the script. A narrative that was once eager to mock Cloud's dalliances in drag, and which turned a blind eye to the sexual implications of the situation, has morphed. In Remake, this scene blossoms into a brilliant and daring piece of media that encourages the exploration and freedom of one's sexual identity. It also legitimizes both the cisgender and queer desires that certain characters harbor.

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  Time to Walk will display photos to match speakers' stories and talks while you walk. [credit: Apple ]

Today, Apple launched a new component of its Fitness+ personal health subscription service: "Time to Walk." With it, users who own an Apple Watch can take a tracked walk exercise while listening to stories or inspiring talks from "influential and interesting people."

These talks will be automatically downloaded to users' Apple Watch, provided those users subscribe to Fitness+. When users start listening to one of the 25-40 minute episodes, the Watch will begin tracking a Walk workout. For users in weelchairs, Time to Walk is instead called "Time to Push" and offers up an Outdoor Weelchair Walk Pace workout instead.

The announcement states that "each Time to Walk episode is shaped by the guest’s personal, life-shaping moments and includes lessons learned, meaningful memories, thoughts on purpose and gratitude, moments of levity, and other thought-provoking topics, recorded while walking outside or in locations that are meaningful to them."